WILDFIRE ↝ E. MUNSON

[17]

"Hold tight, we're coming." Dustin said. "We're coming."

Eddie turned the walkie talkie off with a sigh, burying his face in his hands before looking back up at Lily from where he sat leaning against the other edge of the rock. He looked tired, a look of terror still in his eyes in an expression she knew matched the one she currently wore, but he offered her a small smile, nudging her knee with his.

"Hey, remember that time you and I came here?" he asked, changing the subject in an attempt to lighten the mood, and she nodded, looking up at the rock formation above them with a small smile.

"How could I forget?" she asked simply.

"It was the annual Hellfire Club's bonfire night." he dramatically began to tell the story, causing her to chuckle softly in response. "Some idiot thought mixing teenagers, beer, and truth or dare was a good idea, I don't know, their Dungeon Master's kind of an idiot, but whatever."

"He has his moments." Lily added, smirking softly.

"Shh, interrupting the story, Mayfield, that's so rude." Eddie teased, bringing a finger up to his lips to playfully shush her, and she reached out an arm, batting his hand away as she began to laugh. "We weren't far from here, maybe half a mile or so, so Gareth dared me to come out here with you for ten minutes, and being the good sport you are, you agreed. So we walked out here, and I assured you that nothing had to happen. I could set the timer on my watch, we could just hang out until it went off, and then we'd go back, lie, and just tell the others we kissed. But then you told me about that phrase your sister and her friends always used to say to each other. What was that?"

"Friends don't lie." Lily said.

"Friends don't lie." Eddie repeated slowly with a sly smile. "So I set the timer, and the rest was history." he paused, his smile fading as he chose his next words carefully. "I'm sure you and McKinney used to come here all the time though, right? Isn't this the basketball team's favorite spot? Sorry, I shouldn't have brought him up, but-"

"It's okay," Lily spoke up, shaking her head. "No, actually, we didn't." she explained, causing his eyebrows to pinch slightly as he watched her, confused. "I always told Patrick that I was afraid of the woods at night, so I'd say no whenever he brought it up."

"Lily, you used to plan our camping trips, you're not scared of the woods." Eddie pointed out, but she simply nodded.

"I know that," she assured him. "You know that, but he never knew that. The truth is, I always just associated this place with you, and after last summer it didn't feel right being here with anybody else."

Eddie watched her with an expression she couldn't quite decipher as she spoke. The truth was, not only did she associate Skull Rock with that night after kissing Eddie, but it also marked the last normal night of her life, before she was asked to go pick Billy up from work at the pool and she was dragged into the middle of the mess of the Upside Down. The last night of innocence she'd never get back, no matter how hard she'd tried the past seven months.

"I'm really sorry," Eddie said finally, "about Patrick. For what it's worth, I never hated the guy. Sure, the basketball team liked to pick on me, that's nothing new, and he came looking for me yesterday with a baseball bat, but he was without a doubt the most tolerable one of them all, except Sinclair, of course."

"He was nice," she agreed. "Definitely a much less extreme version of Andy or Jason. I just wish..." she trailed off a bit, pulling her knees closer to her chest.

"Wish what?" he asked.

"I wish I'd known him better." she confessed. "I mean yeah, we were going out for a bit, we'd hang out at parties and he'd walk me to class, but we never really figured out what we were to each other. It was just easier to go along with it when people called him my boyfriend, but we never really got to that point. I knew I was leaving after graduation anyway, and that it wouldn't last, so I guess it never really mattered if he asked me to be his girlfriend or not."

Lily hadn't realized that she started crying until a salty tear landed on her tongue, and she reached up to wipe her eyes as she looked over at the greenery surrounding Skull Rock. Even with the limited time she knew they had, she'd grown to care a lot for Patrick, regardless of the future she'd known they'd never have together. He hadn't deserved to have been torn apart the way he had by Vecna, none of them had.

"And I know Vecna targets those who are going through something." Lily continued. "He and I had some sort of..." she trailed off again, searching for the right words. "...unspoken agreement, I guess. It was obvious that we both had things going on, even if we didn't know the extent of it. Nobody knows that we moved to Forest Hills, just you and the others, so for Patrick, all he knew was that I was dealing with losing Billy. I always told them I drove to parties because I didn't want them to look at me differently, when in reality, I'd either walk or take Max's skateboard. I could tell he was having some troubles at home, but I could also tell that bringing it up was only going to make things worse, so we never talked about those things. If we'd just talked about it, maybe I could've helped him, maybe it wouldn't have been him."

"Hey," Eddie spoke up, causing her to look back at where he now watched her with a determined expression. "Lily, this is not your fault. You didn't know, and if you did, there's nothing you could have done. We don't know how or why Vecna's choosing his targets, but him choosing Patrick was not on you. Do you understand me?"

She nodded, reaching up to wipe her eyes again. "I understand."

"Good," he said. "Now, our friends are on their way here with news, and then we're going to figure out how to kill this son of a bitch. And believe me when I say that we're going to make him pay for what he did to them."